Battle of Tora Bora

Battle of Tora Bora Part of the War in Afghanistan Location of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, near the border. 34°07′N 70°13′E Date December 12, 2001 – December 17, 2001 Location Pachir Wa Agam District, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan Result Indecisive Coalition victory, capture of area by Coalition Forces, failure to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. Belligerents Coalition: United States of America United Kingdom Germany Canada Northern Alliance Taliban Al-Qaeda Commanders and leaders Tommy Franks Dalton Fury Bismillah Khan Osama bin Laden Strength ~50 Members of U.S. 1st SFOD-D; others from CIA SAD, 5th Special Forces Group, 160th SOAR, U.K.SBS, other coalition forces (aircraft); ~100-1,000 Northern Alliance fighters ~300-1,000 Casualties and losses Coalition: None Northern Alliance: Unknown 200 killed

The Battle of Tora Bora was a military engagement that took place in Afghanistan from December 12, 2001 to December 17, 2001, during the opening stages of the War in Afghanistan launched following the September 11 attacks on the United States. The U.S. and its allies believed that Osama bin Laden was hiding in the mountains at Tora Bora, but despite overrunning the Taliban and al-Qaeda positions, they failed to kill or capture him. bin Laden was then able to escape to Pakistan.

Background

Tora Bora (Pashto: تورا بورا, "black cave") is a cave complex situated in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, near the Khyber Pass.

In 2001, it was suspected to be in use by al-Qaeda and the location of bin Laden's headquarters, variously described as a multi-storied cave complex harnessing hydroelectric power from mountain streams, or a lower-rise dwelling with hotel-like corridors capable of sheltering more than 1,000. It was also said to contain a large cache of ammunition, such as Stinger missiles left over from the 1980s.

The outposts in use in 2001 were originally built by extending and shoring up natural caves, with the assistance of the CIA in the early 1980s (Operation Cyclone) for use by mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but several may date back to much earlier periods, as the difficult terrain has been used by tribal warriors fighting foreign invaders since ancestral times.

Battle

Air strikes on Tora Bora

At the end of 2001, al-Qaeda fighters were still holding out in the mountains of the Tora Bora region.

On December 3, 2001, a group of 20 U.S. CIA NCS team members of the code name Jawbreaker and 70 special forces operators from the Army's Delta Force's A Squadron, Navy, and Air Force was inserted by helicopter and parachute to support the operation. On December 5, 2001, Afghan Northern Alliance fighters wrested control of the low ground below the mountain caves from al-Qaeda fighters. The Jawbreaker team and SF teams called in Air Force bombers to take out targets. The al-Qaeda fighters withdrew to higher fortified positions and dug in for the battle.

The Northern Alliance fighters continued a steady advance through the difficult terrain, backed by air strikes and U.S. and British Special Forces. Facing defeat, al-Qaeda forces negotiated a truce with a local militia commander to give them time to surrender their weapons. In retrospect, however, many believe that the truce was a ruse to allow important al-Qaeda figures, including Osama bin Laden, to escape.

On December 12, 2001, the fighting flared again, possibly initiated by a rear guard buying time for the main force's escape through the White Mountains into the tribal areas of Pakistan. Once again, tribal forces backed by U.S. special operations troops and air support pressed ahead against fortified al-Qaeda positions in caves and bunkers scattered throughout the mountainous region. Twelve British SBS commandos, and one British Royal Signals Specialist from 63 Signals squadron now known as 18SFUK, accompanied the U.S. special operations forces in the attack on the cave complex at Tora Bora. Special Forces Operators of the German KSK took part in the battle as well. They were purportedly responsible for the protection of the flanks in the Tora Bora mountains and conducted reconnaissance missions.

As the Taliban teetered on the brink of losing their last bastion, the U.S. focus increased on the Tora Bora. Local tribal militias, paid and organized by Special Forces and CIA SAD paramilitary operations officers, numbering over 2,000 strong, continued to mass for an attack as heavy bombing continued of suspected al-Qaeda positions.

By December 17, 2001, the last cave complex had been taken and their defenders overrun. No massive bunkers were found, only small outposts and a few minor training camps.

A search of the area by U.S. forces continued into January, but no sign of bin Laden or the al-Qaeda leadership emerged. Former CIA officer Gary Berntsen, who led the CIA team (consisting primarily of CIA Paramilitary Officers from Special Activities Division) in Afghanistan that was tasked with locating Osama bin Laden, claims in his 2005 book Jawbreaker that he and his team had pinpointed the location of Osama bin Laden. Also according to Berntsen, a number of al-Qaeda detainees later confirmed that bin Laden had escaped Tora Bora into Pakistan via an easterly route through snow covered mountains to the area of Parachinar, Pakistan. He also claims that bin Laden could have been captured if United States Central Command had committed the troops that Berntsen had requested. Former CIA officer Gary Schroen concurs with this view and Pentagon documents are suggestive.

In an October 2004 opinion article in The New York Times, Gen. Tommy Franks wrote, "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time...Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives ... but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp." Franks, who retired in 2003, was the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan at the time. The last time Osama bin Laden was overheard on the VHF radio was on December 14, 2001. In 2008 Andy McNab, the pseudonym of a former SAS trooper echoed the claims of Berntsen, claiming that the Coalition were, "within a whisker" of capturing bin Laden at Tora Bora.

Many enemy fighters made their escape in the rough terrain and slipped away into the tribal areas of Pakistan to the south and east. It is estimated that around 200 of the al-Qaeda fighters were killed during the battle, along with an unknown number of anti-Taliban tribal fighters. No coalition deaths were reported.

Fury's account

A former Delta Force commander, using the pen name "Dalton Fury", who was present at Tora Bora has written that bin Laden escaped into Pakistan on or around December 16, 2001. Fury gives three reasons for why he believes bin Laden was able to escape: (1) the US mistakenly thought that Pakistan was effectively guarding the border area, (2) NATO allies refused to allow the use of air-dropped GATOR mines, which would have helped seal bin Laden and his forces inside the Tora Bora area, and (3) over-reliance on native Afghan military forces as the main force deployed against bin Laden and his fighters. Fury states that the Afghan forces would usually leave the battlefield in the evenings to break their Ramadan fasts, thereby allowing the al-Qaeda forces a chance to regroup, reposition, or escape.

Fury, in an interview on 60 Minutes, stated that his Delta Force team and CIA Paramilitary Officers traveled to Tora Bora after the CIA pinpointed bin Laden's location in that area. Fury's team proposed an operation in which they would assault bin Laden's suspected position from the rear, over the 14,000 foot high mountain separating Tora Bora from Pakistan. But, Fury's proposal was denied by unidentified officials at higher headquarters for unknown reasons. Fury then proposed the dropping of GATOR mines in the passes leading away from Tora Bora, but this was also denied. Forced to approach the al-Qaeda forces from the front, at one point Fury reports that his team was within 2,000 meters of bin Laden's suspected position, but withdrew because of uncertainty over the number of al-Qaeda fighters guarding bin Laden and a lack of support from allied Afghan troops.

A short time later, the Afghan military forces declared a cease fire with al-Qaeda. When Fury's team prepared to advance again on the al-Qaeda forces anyway, Afghan soldiers drew their weapons on the US soldiers. After 12 hours of negotiations, the Afghans stood down, but this had allowed bin Laden and his bodyguards time to relocate. Fury reports that bin Laden, in his radio calls which began in the afternoon of December 13, 2001, was clearly under duress, reportedly saying to his fighters, "the time is now, arm your women and children against the infidel". Then, after a few hours of enduring massive and accurate aerial bombing, he broke radio silence again to say "Our prayers were not answered. Times are dire and bad. We did not get support from the apostate nations who call themselves our Muslim brothers. Things might have been different". Fury describes that Bin Laden's final words to his fighters on that night were "I'm sorry for getting you involved in this battle, if you can no longer resist, you may surrender with my blessing".

A short time later, what was believed to be bin Laden and his bodyguards were observed entering a cave. Fury's team called down several bombing attacks on the cave, and believed that they had killed bin Laden. Six months later, US and Canadian forces returned and checked several caves in the area, finding remains of al-Qaeda fighters, but not of bin Laden. Fury believes that bin Laden was injured in the shoulder by shrapnel during the bombing of the cave, but was then hidden, given medical care, and assisted out of the area into Pakistan by sympathetic local Afghans.

Guantanamo captives' accounts of the battle

U.S. authorities have justified the continued detention of several dozen Guantanamo captives by the suspicion they had participated in the battle, had been present during the battle, or had passed through the area of the battle before or after it concluded.

During his testimony before a procedure convened under the authority of the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a Yemeni medical doctor described the conditions during the battle. He testified:

• "Most of all the total guns in the Tora Bora area was 16 Kalashnikovs and there are 200 people,"
• "He [Osama bin Laden] came for a day to visit the area and we talked to him and we wanted to leave this area. He said he didn't know where to go himself and the second day he escaped and was gone."

Aftermath

“	...a severe and fierce bombardment began...not one second passed without warplanes hovering over our heads...[America] exhausted all efforts to blow up and annihilate this tiny spot – wiping it out altogether...Despite all this, we blocked their daily attacks, sending them back defeated, bearing their dead and wounded. And not once did American forces dare storm our position, what clearer proof of their cowardice, fear and lies concerning the myth of their alleged power is there?!	”
—Osama bin Laden, 2002

Following Tora Bora, U.S. and U.K. forces and their Afghan allies consolidated their position in the country. A Loya jirga or grand council of major Afghan factions, tribal leaders, and former exiles, an interim Afghan government was established in Kabul under Hamid Karzai. U.S. forces established their main base at Bagram Air Base just north of Kabul. Kandahar International Airport also became an important U.S. base area. Several outposts were established in eastern provinces to hunt for Taliban and Al-Qaeda fugitives. The number of US troops operating in the country would eventually grow to over 10,000.

Meanwhile, the Taliban and al-Qaeda had not given up. A US Senate report concluded that the failure to capture bin Laden "[laid] the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan." Al-Qaeda forces began regrouping in the Shahi-Kot mountains of Paktia Province throughout January and February 2002. A Taliban fugitive in Paktia province, Mullah Saifur Rehman, also began reconstituting some of his militia forces in support of the anti-US fighters. They totaled over 1,000 by the beginning of Operation Anaconda in March 2002. The intention of the insurgents was to use the region as a base area for launching guerrilla attacks and possibly a major offensive in the style of the mujahedin who battled Soviet forces during the 1980s.

In December 2009, the magazine New Republic published an article titled "The Battle for Tora Bora" by Peter Bergen, an expert on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, whose book "Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden" came out soon after 9/11. In his critique Bergen reconstructs the encounter with Osama at Tora Bora. He termed the rebuttal by Tommy Franks, the then US Army chief, for 800 Army rangers from nearby bases to assault the complex of caves where Osama was supposedly hiding "one of the greatest military blunders in recent US history". Bergen argued that the United States failed to capture Osama and allowed the Taliban to return from the cold—regrouped, rejuvenated and remarkably stronger—while US officials were diverted to Iraq.

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden was confirmed to have died in a United States Navy SEAL raid on a compound in the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan, more than nine years after the failed attempts to capture or kill him in the Battle of Tora Bora.

Tora Bora "fortress"

Tora Bora was variously described by the western media to be an 'impregnable cave fortress' housing 2000 men complete with a hospital, a hydroelectric power plant, offices, a hotel, arms and ammunition stores, roads large enough to drive a tank into, and elaborate tunnel and ventilation systems. Both the British and American press published elaborate plans of the base which was readily accepted by the public. When presented with such plans in an NBC interview, the United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield said "This is serious business, there's not one of those, there are many of those".

When Tora Bora was eventually captured by the U.S. and Afghan troops, no traces of the supposed 'fortress' were found despite painstaking searches in the surrounding areas. Tora Bora turned out to be a system of small natural caves housing at most, 200 fighters. While arms and ammunition stores were found, there were no traces of the advanced facilities claimed to exist.

In an interview published by the Public Broadcasting Service, a Staff Sergeant from the U.S. Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 572 described the caves as thus:

Again, with the caves, they weren't these crazy mazes or labyrinths of caves that they described. Most of them were natural caves. Some were supported with some pieces of wood maybe about the size of a 10-foot by 24-foot room, at the largest. They weren't real big. I know they made a spectacle out of that, and how are we going to be able to get into them? We worried about that too, because we see all these reports. Then it turns out, when you actually go up there, there's really just small bunkers, and a lot of different ammo storage is up there. – Jeff, Staff Sgt. ODA 572

See also

• Afghan Civil War
• Death of Osama Bin Laden
• Operation Anaconda
• Osama Bin Laden
• War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
• Assassination attempts on Osama bin Laden
• Special Boat Service
• British Special Forces
• U.S. Army's Delta Force
• CIA's Special Activities Division

Further reading

• Jawbreaker: The attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Gary Berntsen, Three Rivers Press ISBN 0-307-35106-8, Published December 24, 2006 (paperback).
• Online map and picture The Washington Post. December 10, 2008.
• The Long Hunt for Osama Peter Bergen, The Atlantic Monthly. Oct. 2004
• Tora Bora John Bowman, CBC News Online. Dec. 2001
• The Tora Bora Fortress Myth? Edward Epstein, The Times. November 29, 2001
• Lost at Tora Bora Mary Anne Weaver, the New York Times. September 11, 2005
• How bin Laden got away Phillip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor. March 4, 2002
• Michael R. Gordon (December 23, 2001). "A NATION CHALLENGED: SURVIVORS; On Tora Bora, Horror Rained On Al Qaeda". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03EEDE1731F930A15751C1A9679C8B63&scp=1&sq=FAZAL+AHMAD&st=nyt. Retrieved February 1, 2008. 
• Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed To Get bin Laden And Why It Matters Today US Senate majority report, November 30, 2009
• The Battle for Tora Bora: The Definitive Account by Peter Bergen, The New Republic, December 22, 2009